A potential discovery LAST week, British Petroleum (BP) announced a significant gas discovery in the Deepwater West Nile Delta area. The Hodoa discovery, located in the West Mediterranean Deepwater, Nile Delta concession, some 80 kilometres northwest of Alexandria, is the first Oligocene Deep Water discovery in the West Nile Delta area. The Hodoa discovery provides excellent proof of the great potential of the deep reservoirs in the Nile Delta. "Hodoa is an important discovery which builds upon the company's previous successes in the West Nile Delta," said Hisham Mekawi, BP Egypt's president and general manager. Notably, BP currently has interests in 13 offshore concessions in the Nile Delta, with operations conducted in six of these areas. The North Alexandria and West Mediterranean Deepwater concessions are located in the Mediterranean, off the shores of Alexandria. A number of discoveries were made in these concessions. At present, BP Egypt and its partners are currently producing almost 35 per cent of the domestic gas demand, and nearly 40 per cent of Egypt's entire oil production. Boosting entrepreneurship THE EGYPTIAN Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has recently launched the Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre (TIEC), whose purpose is to promote the country's position as an innovation and entrepreneurship hub. TIEC CEO Tarek El-Saadani told members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Cairo this week that the centre's main aim is to promote a culture of entrepreneurship among youth studying and working in the information technology sector. According to El-Saadani, TIEC will work on promoting a culture of innovation by raising youth awareness on the importance of creativity, while establishing a suitable business environment and creating Egypt's own innovation brand. "We need to create our own entrepreneurship and innovation brand by highlighting the success stories of our entrepreneurs. This will help in the culture change process," El-Saadani noted. The centre, according to El-Saadani, will operate within the framework of public-private partnerships as adopted by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. It will also coordinate creative efforts in the field of IT between the government and the private sector, universities and research institutes and academies. Renewed collaboration GLOBAL publishing, research and consultancy firm Oxford Business Group (OBG) will be collaborating with CI Capital, Egypt's leading investment bank, for the second time to produce the Capital Markets chapter of the OBG's forthcoming business guide on Egypt's economic activity and investment opportunities. The publication will be titled Egypt 2011. Egypt 2011 will include a detailed, sector-by-sector guide for foreign investors. It will also feature a wide range of interviews with prominent political, economic and business leaders. CI Capital contributed to the group's last report, published in 2010, and which included details on the wide range of economic reforms that took place in Egypt. "The government's reforms are producing significant developments across the sectors. We are in the midst of heightened industrial activity, while our financial services industry has witnessed the development of the main stock index and exchange," said Karim Helal, CEO of CI Capital. Helal highlighted the importance of keeping the international business community informed of Egypt's changing economic landscape. Tax-friendly Middle East AGAINST all odds, the Middle East (ME) is believed to have fewer and less complicated tax laws than the rest of the world. The findings were highlighted in the "Paying Taxes 2011", an annual report issued by Price waterhouse Cooper (PwC), the World Bank (WB) and International Finance Corporation IFC. For the second year in row, Qatar was the second easiest country to pay tax in globally. In fact, all of the six Gulf Cooperation Council's (GCC) states fall within the top 14 out of 183 countries examined by the report. Accordingly, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain ranked the second, fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth and 14th respectively. "On average there are almost half as many taxes levied in the ME, 5.5, compared to the global average of 10. Moreover, the time to complete tax obligations is significantly lower than the rest of the world," said the report. Moreover, the report indicated that 40 economies have made it easier to pay taxes, with Tunisia improving the most. According to Dean Rolfe, Middle East Tax Leader at PwC, paying taxes in the ME has traditionally been and continues to be relatively straightforward. "However, as governments increasingly need to source revenues to support economic diversification, tax will be seen as a suitable and effective solution to fund governments financial needs," said Rolfe, adding that the report presents the governments with an opportunity to identify both best practice and reform opportunities to improve their international competitiveness. The "Paying Taxes 2011" report measures the ease of paying taxes by assessing the administrative burden for companies to comply with tax regulations and by calculating companies' total tax liability as a percentage of pre-tax profits. More Malaysian oil MALAYSIAN businessmen were recently in Egypt looking for business opportunities for Malaysian palm oil in the Middle East, Western Asia and south Eastern Europe, Mahmoud Bakr reports. Egypt is the largest Malaysian oil importer in the west of the Suez with 74 per cent market share. In 2009 Egypt imported 609,210 metric tonne, a 75 per cent increase compared to 347,558 tonnes imported in 2008. According to Malaysian Palm Oil Council figures Malaysian palm oil exports to Egypt showed an encouraging increase this year. Up to September 2010, Malaysia exported 703,471 tonnes of palm oil, an increase of 55 per cent from 453,183 tonnes on a year to year basis. MPOC is a council under the Malaysian Ministry of Plantation Industries and Commodities.
